Spring developer crisis

[smoth]

Babby... did licho kick your dog? Seems. You have a personal grudge.

[AF]

...

A brilliant summing up, thankyou



No really, thankyou



You deserve it



Yes Im talking about you!



Don't be shy!



Uninformed drivel, yes, but you showed us something important!



That the core people are as gullible as ever. You're probably one of them too! Smurfing and whatnot



Best opinion post of the year

[Cheesecan]

Am I correct in thinking that a JVM language lobby could workaround that by using unitsync java bindings (OS) as a module, while keeping the rest of the lobby closed source?

Not that I care anymore, just an academic curiosity..

edit:
GPL2 Faq seems to suggest that wouldn't be possible either.

[abma]

Am I correct in thinking that a JVM language lobby could workaround that by using unitsync java bindings (OS) as a module, while keeping the rest of the lobby closed source?

why do you want to do that in an open-source project in an open-source community?


this thread is really off-topic, imo it should be closed...

[Cheesecan]

Yes that's quite OT. In theory, someone might want to make a closed source AI or commercial game with a closed source lobby. From what I understand, units etc game content are not bound by GPL (right?). But if there was a non-copyleft unitsync implementation e.g. Apache License 2...it could be done. As I said, just thinking out loud.

[PepeAmpere]

Yes that's quite OT. In theory, someone might want to make a closed source AI or commercial game with a closed source lobby. From what I understand, units etc game content are not bound by GPL (right?). But if there was a non-copyleft unitsync implementation e.g. Apache License 2...it could be done. As I said, just thinking out loud.

Maybe you missed that sentence just comment ago...

why do you want to do that in an open-source project in an open-source community?

Think silent, and be glad police hasnt see your comment, yet.

[Cheesecan]

Well the reason I mentioned it is because I once implemented extraction of map data from the map format - before hoijui helped me to get unitsync java bindings working for the then current engine version. That stuff plus game options is basically all that lobbies use in unitsync.

So if notalobby wants to keep closed source (thought russians were all about sharing?), my estimate is that it isn't an unfeasible project (although the format dxt? iirc wasn't so easy to find libraries for that worked). But sure, pita. Why bother?.. anyhoo

[abma]

Think silent, and be glad police hasnt see your comment, yet.

I'm sure the NSA has

[AF]

NOTALobby could talk over some non linking transport such as TCP/sockets to an unrelated client that just happened to exposed an interface that was a wrapper of unitsync.

It would get around the GPL, but it would be more work, and the program it communicated that interfaced with unitsync would still need to be GPL compatible.


Otherwise there really isn't much reason for it to be closed source. Perhaps they fear it will be forked and stolen? Nevermind that there are other codebases to take from, and you don't need source code to modify a binary ( though it helps enormously ).

[Cheesecan]

That's creative, AF! Something like a unitsync service/daemon. It could use CORBA to make things simpler. This would be a 3rd solution to their dilemma, since it wouldn't require re-implementation.

If they want to keep it closed source, a good measure to protect the binary is to distribute it with a license stating that reverse engineering is not allowed.

[PicassoCT]

This is now a bullet vs homespun Physicengine thread.

Bullet is open source according to there head license. But down in the source - suddenly Sony claims a Copyright. Sony has never struck me as the google of physix.


Homespun means- we reinvent the wheel. Always a bad thing.

[Anarchid]

Bullet is zlib licence. The license of zlib is approved by RMS. If it's approved by RMS, then it's safe even if Sony is main contributor.

Also it's broadly used in other open source project, most notably Blender. Remember the videos? :)

The real question, is which will require more work.

[PicassoCT]

certainly not binding in the library.. if it doesent do the desyncdance to often

but writting my own physic engine would be quite a learning experience..

so its actually a look on the codebase of bullet- and how many evil quirks it will develop if its floats rock the boat

[kortex]

In my opinion, you should make the game more popular and gamer friendly.
If the game is more "well known and popular" you get more attention and as a result more mod and game devs (over time).

The game looks kind of beta and unfinished when you first execute the spring binary (if you don't know that there is a "springlobby"). You can't setup an advanced singleplayer game, you can't start a multiplayer game and the settings are some kind of list.

Put the lobby into the game, add a settings menu (maybe with some external lib like GiGi?). Spray some glitter over the first screen, you could even make a fancy splash-screen or a (skippable) intro with the spring logo.

Put a DLC interface into the menu, so players can directly donwload spring (springfiles) content into the game (maps, mods, AIs etc.)

Call these changes Spring 2.0 and anounce it everywhere.

I don't like this new and fancy stuff, but this is the trend. Spring makes a very bad first impression on gamers that are used to play games like SupremeCommander.


Focusing everything on "gamer friendly" is not a good idea but balancing it between "gamer friendly", "mod dev friendly" and "game dev friendly" is the way to go (my opinion).

[PicassoCT]

Maybee we should really start lobby by default with spring.exe..

[Zealot]

@kortex

I agree.



I could contribute graphic design for menus if people are interested. I dont have any real gui programming experience yet so i cant help there.


Some thoughts of mine:


A level of polish would be nice and a load screen that takes people straight to some noob friendly simple menu. Then an advanced options tab to show the current menu.

Noob friendly menu with 4 buttons.

1 An instant action button that gave you the choice from a list of games like zk, bar, evo, the correct ai is auto loaded and the player can select a map then the game downloads the map ai and game and launches.

2 a 'launch multiplayer lobby' button that launches webbrowser and weblobby.

3 It would be good to have a noob friendly settings menu with low med, high and safe mode.

4 advanced option menu - launches current spring menu.

These are just some thoughts on making the engine more user friendly. I will assist where I can if any one else is interested.

Im just saying this because when I first found spring I spent a few days trying to get it to work it did not. I came back a year and a half later and it took me aver a week of trying to install spring and trawling through forums and wiki until i managed to get it to work.

I know alot of people are not as persistent is me and would be put off by this.

I am offering to help where I can, because I really like the spring engine and community, I worked in sales, customer service and publicity for years and i know how first impressions can greatly affect a persons choice to engage with a product and then discover if it has substance or not.

Spring has a great deal of substance, but it is really hard to get into it. So a lot of people are put off before they can experience it.

I probably sound like another ideas guy but i will help where i can if some one who can program an interface can help We could know this out really quick. They in the near future we could launch spring 2.0 with ZK BAR and EVO and a few more polished games. Some nice video adverts, and really get some attention.



Also on this note.....

I have a feeling that now is a really good time to really quickly officially distance spring from TA IP as the IP has just been bought and it looks likely that a TA 2 could be in the works.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/07/22/total ... red-games/

Now or the near future is the time the new company (wargaming.net) could be looking to shutdown any illegal competition before they launch their new TA 2.

(This may not be the case but if they are developing TA2 (which could be quite likely given the financial success of the PA kickstarted) then it would make logical business sense to take legal action against any illegal competition that could be dividing their potential customer base. Then again they could be nice and support the fans of spring and the open source ethos. But i don't think that is likely for a multi million dollar company. )


With ZK BAR and EVO (and 1944 and others) We have a really strong core product that could easily be marketed and get a big audience.

With the new engine version coming out soon, and things already being quite stable it is a good time. Web lobby is super awesome and makes the game really user friendly.

I believe that now is the time to put some nice user interface on things and prepare for a marketing push.

-----

Ok now I brace for flaming....


PS..Sorry for typos ect I am in a rush to get to a meeting so i will edit the post later tonight.

[Google_Frog]

In my opinion, you should make the game more popular and gamer friendly.
If the game is more "well known and popular" you get more attention and as a result more mod and game devs (over time).

The game looks kind of beta and unfinished when you first execute the spring binary (if you don't know that there is a "springlobby"). You can't setup an advanced singleplayer game, you can't start a multiplayer game and the settings are some kind of list.

Put the lobby into the game, add a settings menu (maybe with some external lib like GiGi?). Spray some glitter over the first screen, you could even make a fancy splash-screen or a (skippable) intro with the spring logo.

Put a DLC interface into the menu, so players can directly donwload spring (springfiles) content into the game (maps, mods, AIs etc.)

Call these changes Spring 2.0 and anounce it everywhere.

I don't like this new and fancy stuff, but this is the trend. Spring makes a very bad first impression on gamers that are used to play games like SupremeCommander.


Focusing everything on "gamer friendly" is not a good idea but balancing it between "gamer friendly", "mod dev friendly" and "game dev friendly" is the way to go (my opinion).

Replace "The Game" with something which is actually a game (as in not an engine) and you've described the current state of things. Zero-K has an idiot proof installer which never exposes players to the spring binary and I'm fairly sure many other games have a similar system. I'm not speaking for them because I don't know exactly what their installers look like but I know some sort of installer exists.

[PepeAmpere]

...

Replace "The Game" with something which is actually a game (as in not an engine) and you've described the current state of things. Zero-K has an idiot proof installer which never exposes players to the spring binary and I'm fairly sure many other games have a similar system. I'm not speaking for them because I don't know exactly what their installers look like but I know some sort of installer exists.

Frog of Google is right, there are many installers and some of them pretty cool and not just idiot-proof. Future is here, just some people dont want to see it. :)

[kortex]

Frog of Google is right, there are many installers and some of them pretty cool and not just idiot-proof. Future is here, just some people dont want to see it. :)

Or they are using linux and never met those "installers". If games like ZK and EVO use installers and fancy icons to launch the game, then it's not the problem of the game devs to get it gamer friendly. Maybe it's a better way to make the spring engine more developer friendly. More fancy games/mods == more attraction.

[PepeAmpere]

Frog of Google is right, there are many installers and some of them pretty cool and not just idiot-proof. Future is here, just some people dont want to see it. :)

Or they are using linux and never met those "installers". If games like ZK and EVO use installers and fancy icons to launch the game, then it's not the problem of the game devs to get it gamer friendly. Maybe it's a better way to make the spring engine more developer friendly. More fancy games/mods == more attraction.

There are windows, linux, mac installers, but maybe you just dont see them.